Let me start off and say the food is great! My guests all loved the food. The views are spectacular and the overall place is gorgeous. Food and venue get 5 stars!
However, wedding coordinator was not as accommodating and the overall experience ...working with staff has just been disappointing. The coordinator just didn't care about making sure the day went smoothly. Throughout the night, she was just MIA. Honestly, I don't even know her name. We had booked Palisadium in Nov 2015, a couple months before the wedding, we're told Jennifer is no longer working here so we were given Patrice to work with. Two weeks before the wedding, Patrice no longer works there and given this new person.
Stuff happens and staff leaves, but this new person was just unaccommodating. She didn't show up for our rehearsal, and the morning of the wedding, this person wasn't there at 10am( the time that the banquet office is supposed to be open). I had dropped all the centerpieces and all the other stuff for the wedding and left instructions with the setup crew. He pretty much got the gist of everything and he had done more work with me than the wedding coordinator.
As the ceremony was to begin at 5:30 sharp, I had to search for her and ask to start the ceremony. I had found her in the office sitting down and on her phone. I’ve been in enough weddings and been part of enough bridal parties to know that the coordinator should have been with us from the moment we stepped into the venue.
Let me also add to the fact that the bridal suite was not setup, and the waitress (Sophia) and to scramble at the last minute to set us up in the Park Bistro (which is what was promised to us by Jennifer and Patrice). Not all the food from cocktail hour made it to our suite, but last minute scramble we were able to eat something. The wife and I went to cocktail hour and the bartender had denied me a drink since cocktail hour was “coming to an end”. Really? As the guy who paid the bills, I should have gotten a drink 5 mins before the end of cocktail HOUR! Also, the venue couldn’t supply the right liquor for the signature cocktail, and I had ask this coordinator to ensure they used Bullit Rye for the Old fashions and not use Crown Royal. They eventually got it right during the reception.
The wedding coordinator did orchestrate the processional into the reception hall, and that was the last that I saw her. She was supposed to move the cigar box to the second bar, lay out the glow sticks for the guests, and make sure everything was going well. I had to ask my waitress to turn down the heat because the coordinator was no where to be found. At the end of the night, the coordinator finally came out to see if everything went smoothly. If she was there the whole night with my wife and attending to her needs, then she wouldn’t even have to ask. For the record, she didn’t even ask me, she went to my wife while she was exiting the bathroom with a basket in one hand and her dress in the other. This person couldn’t even help her carry things. Good thing we have great friends to help out.
In the end, the wedding was great! But really, the coordinator should have ensured everything went accordance with our plans. We needed to stay on top of the plans while we’re greeting our guest and enjoying our time with them. And any decent coordinator would have made sure everything was to our specifications. It was really disappointing that we had to do this solo. Thanks to my MC for holding it down for us!